-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- `` Our country has changed , '' wrote Chief Justice John Roberts on June 25 , 2013 , when five of the nine Supreme Court Justices dismantled the historic Voting Rights Act .

Roberts is correct in at least one respect : Today 's Republican Party is no longer the party of Abraham Lincoln , as former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens reminded us again in a recent article in The New York Review of Books . Stevens , a lifelong Republican appointed to the court by Gerald Ford , attacked Roberts and his Republican colleagues for usurping the authority of Congress which had overwhelmingly renewed the act in 2006 .

But 48 years ago this week , the Republican Party supported the cause of voting rights . On August 6 , 1965 , when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law , he gave the second pen he used to Everett Dirksen , the Republican Senate Minority Leader . Dirksen deserved the honor because he was a major architect of the act . In fact , the bill was written in Dirksen 's office as he sat next to Acting Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach . Later , insiders joked that the bill should be called `` Dirksenbach . ''

Although suffering from emphysema , ulcers and an enlarged heart , Dirksen worked hard defending the bill on the floor of the Senate , successfully defeating Southern efforts to weaken it . Johnson feared that a Southern filibuster would delay the bill until the Senate adjourned for the summer , a dangerous prospect . `` They been doin ' that for 35 years that I been here , '' Johnson fumed , `` and I been watchin ' 'em do it . ''

Opinion : 50 years later , civil rights struggle is far from over

Johnson turned to Dirksen for help . The Senator from Illinois persuaded 23 fellow Republicans to vote for cloture , shutting off a filibuster and freeing the Voting Rights Act for an up or down vote . When it came , 30 Republicans joined 47 Democrats to pass the bill and send it to the House for their consideration .

After Southern efforts to destroy the bill in the House were defeated and differences between House and Senate versions of the bill were resolved in conference committee , the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed overwhelmingly by both houses of Congress that August , with Republican support .

Soon , however , Republicans began to court white voters in the South and elsewhere who were alienated by the Democratic Party 's embrace of civil rights . Richard Nixon first adopted this `` Southern strategy '' in his 1968 presidential campaign , following the advice of Kevin Phillips , a political advisor , who later noted that `` the more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South , the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans . ''

And so it came to be : Blacks , who were affiliated with Lincoln 's Republican party after the Civil War and well into the 20th century , moved decisively to join the party of Johnson , and later Clinton , and Obama , while the Republican Party moved sharply to the right and came to mostly represent white Americans .

In 2010 , after winning control of 25 state legislatures , Republicans enacted a series of laws designed to suppress the votes of those who elected Barack Obama president in 2008 .

Then , on June 25 , 2013 , the conservative majority on the Supreme Court bid a final farewell to the party of Lincoln by demolishing the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder . Troubled by this development , John Paul Stevens , a Republican appointed to the court in 1975 by President Gerald Ford , offered his dissent in The New York Review of Books article .

Justice Stevens felt strongly that the court had erred in taking the case , since Congress had thoroughly investigated and found evidence of racial discrimination in voting in 2006 , resulting in the act 's near-unanimous reauthorization that same year .

He argued that the chief justice 's opinion had failed `` to explain why such a decision should be made by the members of the Supreme Court , '' and not the Congress . After all , the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution , which prohibits interference with voting on the basis of race , color , and condition of previous servitude , clearly gives the Congress the right to pass legislation to enforce that amendment . `` The members of Congress , representing the millions of voters who elected them , are far more likely to evaluate correctly the ... issue ... , '' Stevens concluded . Conservatives on the court were guilty of the judicial activism they had long decried .

Veterans of forgotten voting war count the cost

In a final ironic twist , Stevens quoted Antonin Scalia 's dissent in the Defense of Marriage case , which Stevens thought applied at least as well , if not better , to what the court had done in Shelby County v. Holder : `` We have no power to decide this case . And even if we did , we have no power under the Constitution to invalidate this democratically adopted legislation . The court 's errors on both points spring forth from the same diseased root : an exalted conception of the role of this institution in America . ''

Stevens ' dissent , coming as it does from the man who served longer than any other Republican appointee on the Supreme Court , testifies to how far that party has strayed from its origins .

With the gutting of the Voting Rights Act , Republicans throughout the South are again passing voter suppression laws -LRB- and , in North Carolina , legislation which would damage women 's reproductive rights -RRB- . It is no longer the party of Lincoln or Reagan . It has become the party of Jefferson Davis . Whether the American people wish to turn the clock back to 1861 remains to be seen .

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Gary May .

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Gary May : Roberts court gutting Voting Rights Act , recalls that GOP no longer party of Lincoln

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He says leading Republican in 1965 , Dirksen , was architect of act , rounding up GOP votes

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Later , Republican `` Southern Strategy '' wooed white voters , blacks flocked to Democrats

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May : Now court has abetted GOP , as it tries to obstruct voting rights in states